For many years now, wine snobs have been unrivaled as the most notorious and annoying in the realm of snobbery. Wine bottles were the perfect vessel for conveying ones superiority over the common man. There are a seemingly endless amount of small and exclusive wineries that allowed someone with only an upper middle class income to drink wine that a neighbor or friend had never seen. By contrast, the barriers to entry into the world of car snobbery are prohibitive to most people, as you would have to spend some serious money to drive a car that none of your friends had ever seen up close before.
Wine also give snobs much more opportunity to revel in their snobbery, what with books and courses that explain how to properly drink and appreciate wine as well as a huge vocabulary of adjectives, most of which are completely devoid of actual meaning, to describe wines. You don’t need to do a course to learn how to enjoy a Ferrari. You put the top down, find an open road, and stomp on the gas pedal. For snob points per dollar, nothing could compare to wine. Until now.
Snobby wine drinkers have long looked at beer drinkers with disdain. While the image of the wine drinker was one of culture and sophistication, a beer drinker was symbolized by the guy in the sports bar watching football and washing down 4 pounds of hot wings with a gallon of light lager, English soccer hooligans, Homer Simpson, and middle aged slow pitch softball players. Then just a few years ago, hipsters starting mobilizing themselves and created the rapidly growing world of beer snobbery.
I don’t know why but I personally find beer snobs exponentially more annoying than wine snobs. It was always accepted that if you drink enough wine with people you would eventually cross paths with a wine snob, but beer drinking was always a pretension-free oasis, where you could simply relax with friends and enjoy the beer of your choice or whatever your friends were offering. Then all of a sudden you had these stocking cap wearing, bearded zealots popping up everywhere who look down on anyone who didn’t stand in line for two hours in rural Vermont to drop $20 on a six pack of beer.
I actually enjoy most of the beers that beer snobs love, I just don’t feel the same vitriol at the types of beers they hate. While I generally prefer more flavorful beers, I have no problem drinking you average light lager. Those who turn their noses up at mainstream beer brands have clearly never gotten drunk on their neighbor’s home brew.